Our trip to
Argentina...
J.S. Bach and Arthur Miller
A play in a book is only the
shadow of a play and not even a
clear shadow of it...The printed
script of a play is hardly more
than an architect's blue print of
a house not yet built or [a
house] built and destroyed. The
color, grace and levitation, the
structural pattern in motion, the
quick interplay of live beings,
suspended like fitful lightning
in a cloud, these things are the
play, not words on paper or
thoughts and ideas of an author."
Tennessee
Williams
If you’ve ever studied music, the
point that Williams is trying to
make with this poetic statement
will seem quite clear. Usually,
when we read, we are accustomed
to the pages and the printed
words holding all the dramatic
tension of a work; a novel is, or
should be, a complete, a
coherent, an autonomous thing,
and it should require only the
eye and voluminous imagination of
a skilled interpreter for its
many colors and deft movements to
be brought to life. This can
make reading a play misleading,
though, if you assume that it
follows the novel’s suit. Better
to compare the playwright’s
printed script to the composer’s
naked score, for these two both
share that quality of
incompleteness native to the
blueprint of Williams’ architect.
I went to the symphony a
couple of weeks ago to see the
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Orchestra at the Arlington
theatre. An Israeli violinist,
something of a child prodigy by
the name of Gil Shaham, played
the solo part for the finale,
which was a violin concerto by
Brahms. It was mesmerizing. I
have played the piano for ten
years or so, teaching myself the
rules and language of music, and
trying to parlay what mental
prowess I have developed with
theory and scales, into a
facility with the keyboard, so I
have some appreciation for the
difficulties involved in
stringing together the thousands
of notes that comprise any
respectable piece. It often
seems to me that the chance of
erring increases with a very
reliable geometric regularity;
each added note stacks the odds
further against your successful
interpretation, and each
correctly executed movement adds
to the dramatic tension and the
size of your feat. Of course,
the mood, and the emotional
experience which each musician
brings to his instrument also
varies dramatically from man to
man, and each score is really
only the vaguest hint at what its
message might be. A score alone
contains none of the emotion, or
the depth of a piece brought to
life. So too with a script.
Arthur Miller’s latest
masterpiece, Resurrection Blues,
is an excellent example of
Williams’s point. The script is
a brilliant, savvy bit of satire,
that spends most of its time
reflecting on the philosophical,
moral, and practical implications
of America’s rampant consumer
culture, idealism, and
militarism. Miller’s dialogue is
insightful, funny, sharp, and
reflective of the admirable fact
that he still, at the age of
ninety-seven, has his finger
firmly on the pulse of America.
Despite all of this, the play has
drawn a couple of mixed reviews
that have stated it “could stand
to lose some marginal characters,
and at times, things bog down in
rhetoric” , that it “slips out of
control”1 at times, or that
In its first outing, Resurrection
is funny and dark, but until it
resists an inclination to
broadcast its moral undercurrent
and pushes all its characters
into the embrace of satire, it
will not punch us square in our
complacent American guts.
Comments like these did not
plague the production I saw in
April, at Old Globe theatre, in
San Diego. This production was
executed almost flawlessly, and
filled with a star studded cast.
It managed, with the same script,
not to get bogged down in the
rhetoric that has plagued some of
the earlier productions, and to
instead place a strong emphasis
on the humor, and the repartee
that develops between the various
characters. The more dry,
philosophical monologues were
delivered in an offhand manner
that provided them with levity
that, I assume, was missing from
earlier productions. In any
case, the point that these
various productions, that have
met with equally various reviews,
make is precisely that which
Tennessee Williams is trying to
make in the opening passage: A
play is not truly a play until it
has been brought to life by
actors, directors and costume
designers, on the stage, and
before a real audience.
Williams mentions ‘color, grace
and levitation, [and] the
structural pattern in motion’
when discussing what he considers
to be the elements that bring a
live performance to life.
Returning to the musical analogy,
Bach’s Goldberg Variations is an
excellent example of this. This
piece, composed of 35 variations
on an absurdly simple opening
aria, swells and contracts by
turns as Bach, in his genius,
leads it through an extensive set
of variations that ranges across
a number of keys, and varies
greatly in complexity, tone, and
character. If you read music, or
even if you know the theme and do
not, you can pick out the
patterns in the notes of the
first variation. Each successive
variation, however, becomes more
difficult to interpret visually;
while maintaining the theme
throughout, Bach applies a new
motif to the original aria,
reinventing the melody in each
variation. Some of the
intricacies of these variations
can be read in the notes but each
pianist’s interpretation breathes
a unique life into the piece.
Andras Schiff gave a rendition of
this piece last week at the
Lobero theatre that was simply
wonderful. Yet his
interpretation, tied closely to
the original score, and its
origins as a piece for the
Harpsichord (an instrument
incapable of volume control)
differed immensely from Glen
Gould’s famous 1955 recording,
which interprets the piece as a
work for the modern piano, with
all its marvelous modalities.
The color that Williams is
talking about is, of course, not
literal – he does not mean shades
of red, yellow, and blue. What
he is talking about, as it
applies to music, is the tone,
the volume, the timbre, and the
accent (i.e., staccato, legato,
etc.) that the musician applies
to the notes. These are,
incidentally, the very things
that bring a piece of music to
life, and the same that bring a
play to life.
In terms of a play’s script,
Williams’s colors, grace, and
structural pattern of motion
refer to the set design, the
lighting, the physical movement
of the actors upon the stage, and
their delivery of their lines.
These are the tone, the volume,
the timbre, and the accents of a
live play, and they are no less
integral to the life of a play
than they are to the life of a
piece of music.
The mixed responses to Arthur
Miller’s new play are an
excellent example of how integral
the production is to the success
of a play. Miller is a past
master at the art of theatre, and
in Resurrection Blues he has
written an excellent script, but
until the San Diego production,
at the Old Globe theatre, much
of the positive commentary on
Miller’s play seemed to hinge on
his reputation. It took an
excellent production, and
successful interpretation for
someone to say, “…this latest
offering by America's most
important living playwright has
been waiting for the right
production. Happy to report, it's
here, now, directed by Mark
Lamos, with an ace Globe cast
sparking the mordant, where-do-
we-go-from-here spirit of "
Resurrection Blues" to life.”
While a play, or a piece of music
is given its first breath of life
by the playwright or composer who
envisions it, and while the basic
structural framework of either
one is bound to the words or
notes of a piece, the success or
failure of a work depends heavily
on the live performance, and the
actors or musicians who perform
it. What Tennessee Williams is
referring to with his poetic
reverie is, I think, embodied
more simply by the term
Performance Arts, the gentre of
which both theater and music are
members: in order for a work to
be ‘performance’, it must be
performed!